March 26, 2009

Last week it came to light in a Times Union article that, at the beginning of March,
both the federal Fish and Wildlife Service and Environmental
Protection Agency had sent letters to the U.S. Army Corps
of Engineers objecting to Albany’s latest plan to expand the
Rapp Road landfill. The mayor’s office had been banking on
the 13-acre expansion to extend the life of the dump up to
six and a half more years, and failed to make any contingency
plans, his critics say. Currently, it is estimated that the
landfill will be full by November.

“We
are in an emergency now,” said Councilman Corey Ellis (Ward
3). “They have had 12 years to deal with this issue, and instead
of dealing with it, this administration figured they would
get an expansion. They never prepared for the future. That
is the problem with this city: We don’t prepare for the future.
And now we are in a crisis.”

March 25, 2009

It's no big shocker at this point that a lot of folks get their news from comedians (not to mention jokes from journalists) . . . but seriously folks. A recent Rasmussen poll found that a third of young Americans see Colbert and Stewart as legitimate news alternatives, but more significant is the way some high level journalists are seeking better job security in the field of comedy.

In yet another sign that the line between real news and fake news is
getting thinner, one of CNN’s main anchors during the 1980s and 1990s,
Bobbie Battista, has taken a step through the looking glass and can now
be seen anchoring reports online for ONN, The Onion News Network.

March 24, 2009

You should read the pro-DFH (please see definintion No. 2 here) blog Whiskey Fire, just because. They're upstaters too, who just happen to be SW of us at the other end of I-88. Here are two fun recent posts--post one and post two--about NPR.

March 21, 2009

"So mark May 9, 2009, on your calendar for a coast-to-coast celebration of the
way trains connect people and places. In Washington, DC, Chicago, Philadelphia
and Los Angeles there will be simultaneous National Train Day festivities that
are sure to be a treat for all ages."

Oh, so no party in Rensselaer?

As we get closer to the big day, I'll post random fun facts about Amtrak.

Random Fun Fact No. 1: Amtrak used to operate a LOT MORE long-distance trains. Thanks to jerks who don't like passenger trains--jerks like Jimmy Carter and Newt Gingrich and John McCain and Bill Clinton--we no longer can ride the North Coast Hiawatha or Desert Wind or Pioneer.

The Trouble With Harry is a very funny comedy about a dead man who can't stay buried. (No, he's not a zombie, it's not that kind of movie--people just keep digging him up and moving him to another grave.) Here are a couple of posters that show how Paramount had no idea how to market a Hitchcock comedy.

March 19, 2009

Over the past week, Hearst, a privately held company, continued
its drastic steps to reverse what it claims has been a nine-year
run of money loss. On Tuesday, The Seattle Post-Intelligencer,
a Hearst paper, ran its final print edition after 146 years,
and laid off around 130 editorial staffers, switching to an
online-only model manned by a 20-person newsroom. Also, over
the weekend, Hearst finally broke the guild that represents
the employees of its San Francisco Chronicle, after
issuing the threat that it would lay off 50 percent more people
than its standing offer of 150 if the union wouldn’t concede
to the company’s demands. These demands included increased
work weeks, decreased paid vacation, reduced company assistance
in health-care costs, and one of the most contentious: stripping
language from the union contract that protects seniority guidelines
in layoffs.

March 17, 2009

Is in the comments to this great Roy Edroso post at the Village Voice about the right-bloggers whimsical threats to "go Gault":

"These people are happy to wallow in that Ayn Rand shit, which is the
Gone With The Wind of grocery store managers: It just points up the
fact they're too fucking stupid to read Thorsten Veblen, or even Mark
Twain."

March 15, 2009

Lydia Kulbida is now blogging over at the Times Union; she has a post up about media bias. Which reminded me of a story that I got to see Channel 13 cover, years ago.

I very infrequently write news (because I'm an arts editor), but a number of years ago I covered an EPA hearing at Giffen Elementary in Albany about a proposed asphalt plant on Pearl Street. (That never was built, btw.) Channel 13 ran a story about it; poor Kelly Lynch had to hang around to do one of those "live" intros I'll never understand the point of. The only person (of many, many people) shown in 13's story speaking against the plant was fumbling and inarticulate. Most (but not all, and I'll get to that shortly) people who spoke against the project--and that was almost everyone who spoke at the meeting, and included local politicians and reps for the Doane Stuart School and a convent--was articulate and gave reasoned arguments.

After looooong reflection, however, I don't suspect it was bias at work. Maybe that particular footage looked best. If the story had been intended as a REAL hit piece on people against the project, it could have emphasized the hippie-anarchists from Grand Street with their percussion instruments (who annoyingly, would rattle and pound periodically during the hearing when they heard something they liked), and portrayed these otherwise well-meaning kids as freaks typical of the plant opposition.

Was the story a true representation of the meeting? No. But I'm not sure it could have been, given the time (and technical) constraints of TV. Which is why people should NEVER just get their news from one source.